Reuters Compares Photos of Clean and Polluted Beijing

Photos of the city in sunny and smoggy days are posted in a blog.

Kim Kyung Hoon, Reuters photographer, published photos of the Beijing's sky, comparing sunny and smoggy days in the city.

Decades of economic growth in China lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but rapid industrialization has had a negative impact on the environment and led to dangerous levels of air pollution in the country's capital, writes the journalist on the Reuters blog.

Over the past seven years, concentration of the particulate matter in Beijing's air exceeded nearly five times the recommended concentration set by the World Health Organization. According to Greenpeace and scientists at Peking University, more than 257,000 premature deaths were recorded in 31 Chinese cities with high levels of air pollution.

Kim Kyung Hoon writes that masks and air purifiers have become commonplace necessities for the resident of Beijing and other polluted cities of China.